Wednesday — Filming Locations & Real Places

Going into Wednesday, I figured it was just an Addams Family spin-off and hit play without much expectation.

Then I saw that eerie Nevermore Academy building and immediately started wondering whether it was a set or CGI.

Turns out it's neither. It's a real castle in Romania called Cantacuzino Castle.

Built in 1911, and the backstory behind it is nowhere near spooky — it was just a prime minister's summer villa. It was later owned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and now it's been restored and opened to the public.

시나이아 왕실 기차역(루마니아) — 극중 제리코역으로 등장한 실제 촬영지 · Wikimedia Commons

Director Tim Burton said the real challenge was making Romania look like Vermont — reshaping an already gothic-looking country into something with an American East Coast feel.

Early on, it plays like a deadpan transfer student adjusting to a new school. But episode by episode it grows into a mystery chasing down whatever "monster" is terrorizing the town.

And here's the show's real twist: that monster turns out to be Tyler, the sheriff's son — the exact person Wednesday was slowly starting to let her guard down around. Finding out the guy who'd been by her side the whole time was the Hyde felt like a genuine gut-punch.

Even more shocking is who was pulling his strings. The gentle-seeming botany teacher, Ms. Thornhill, turns out to actually be Laurel Gates — a descendant of the Gates family locked in an old feud with the Addams' ancestor, Goody Addams. The person who looked safest the whole time had been the mastermind from the start.

Wednesday's relationship with her roommate Enid is another reason this show holds up. Two total opposites slowly becoming real friends shows that even a character who hides every emotion eventually lets someone in.

부쿠레슈티 식물원(루마니아) — 웬즈데이 시즌 1의 실제 촬영 장소 중 하나 · Wikimedia Commons

I also found out how the Rave'N dance scene in Episode 4 came together — Jenna Ortega choreographed it herself, two days before filming, while she had COVID. There's a reason the deadpan character looks like a completely different person the moment she starts dancing.

Starting in Season 2, filming shifted to Ireland. Charleville Castle, used for the Gothic interiors, was already famous as a "haunted castle" with its own guided tours before the show ever got there.

So this isn't just a gothic school drama — it's a mystery that very slowly reveals the person standing closest to you was the threat all along.

Nevermore isn't an imaginary school. It's a real castle that was a prime minister's villa, then a government building, and is now a tourist attraction. I've never been to Romania, but this show just put it on my list.

If I ever make it there, I want to see with my own eyes how a building that started as just a summer villa got reborn as Nevermore Academy.